How to measure your organizational authenticity

In a world full of skeptics, fake news and troll farms, the only messages that are getting through are ones that are either infuriating, shocking, hilarious or authentic. And for brands, authentic is a lot easier and less stressful than the other options.

As a result, more and more communicators are looking for ways to measure authenticity, because they know that in order to be successful these days it isn’t enough to be loud, or cheap, or available, or good at customer service. In today’s competitive environment consumers aren’t just looking for value, they’re closely looking at your values—and examining what you do about them, not just what you talk about. So, one of the best ways a company can differentiate itself from the competition is by demonstrating that it is adhering to those values and its core purpose in everything it does.

Which is why, of late, all of my clients include “authentic” as a criterion in their quality scores when looking at their content. This requirement for authenticity has led a number of academics, vendors and suppliers to create various indexes and tools to rate an organization “authenticity.”